Before you say “What the &*&(!*^*)!!”, let me tell you this has nothing to do Asian metrosexual-boybands-who-have-to-review-English-grammar-seriously or frou-frou-girlbands-who-look-like-fish-vendors-without-makeup.

This is about the HP Mini 1000’s fan. Do you ever wonder why the Mini gets a little too hot to the touch after using it for quite a while? I know I do. Although it doesn’t get seriously hot – not so much as to practically let you use it as a hot plate to swish up eggs on for your own version of a techie breakfast in bed – but it does get worrying at times. Specially when you’re in a perpetually hot and humid country like I’m in, you continually worry about letting your precious Mini’s innards bake itself in the heat.

The HP Mini’s fan apparently doesn’t work in OS X 10.5.7, according to the myhpmini forums. There’s something about the AppleACPIPlatform.kext that’s gone amiss, albeit it’s got lots to do with the system changes caused by the update. The forumer who posted the fix, posta74, did a retail Leo install on his 2140 and he’s got sleep working as well. See vid below:

Now I must say I’m really envious of his MacBook Mini version –

it seems HD (1366 x 768) as the Apple boot logo’s in no way distorted and squashed.

At first, I didn’t pay much attention to this fan issue as we’re running on different hardwares anyway – 2140 and 1000 have their differences plus he’s on retail Leo and I’m on iDeneb. But then again, I thought I could try; bobbypotluck, who’s also got a Mini similar to mine, seems to have tried it and so I’m givin’ it a shot.

2) Go to /System/Library/Extensions and backup and delete the ff. kexts:

– AppleACPIPlatform.kext

– AppleThermal.kext

– AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext

* I didn’t see any AppleThermal.kext nor AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext on /S/L/E (/System/Library/Extensions) folder. I guess it’s because the AppleThermal.kext, you get from running retail Leo but I’m on iDeneb and I’ve already substituted AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext with VoodooPower.kext.

4) Launch your preferred kext installer to apply posta74’s modified kext or, alternatively, you can copy it manually to your /S/L/E folder.I’d color coded (blue) this new kext before I installed it on my system just so that I’d be able to distinguish it from the rest (grey and white – no color coding) who’ve all been long-time residents in my MacBook Mini.

5) Clear caches and you can opt to go the extra mile by repairing permissions via Disk Utility (not a bad idea; it’s always a good thing to be careful) and reboot.

What happened after this little exercise you ask? I don’t know either.

I’m actually watching the most recent episode I’ve downloaded of my fave asian drama on my MacBook Mini. I’ve specifically propped it on top my belly while I lay in bed so I can observe thermal changes as I use it. It still gets a bit warm but I guess that’s only normal. The fan kicked in about 20 minutes into the .rmvb file I’m playing.

And no, there’s no audible confirmation from the fan – I put it up to my ear to listen but can’t hear much if not zilch at all (cause I do hear the hard drive humming quietly). Then I put it up to my nose at last and notice that there’s warm air blowing gently from the fan grill on the Mini’s left side. That’s how I know that the fan’s working.